


Jack's Century

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 02:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack Harkness is left stranded in 1869. He meets the Doctor again in 2007 . But what is important are the 138 years in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jack's Century

 

1870s

 

The first time Jack Harkness realised that he could not die was after he was shot on Ellis Island. At first he thought it a lucky coincidence that caused the bullets to miss any vital organs. He mistook dying for just unconscieousness. He wasn't used to it after all. It was only when he woke up and noticed that even though his body was dirty and his clothes were stiff from the dried blood, his body did not bear any wounds, not even a scar that he realised, he had died.

Jack wasn't sure whether he was immortal or just undead, like a zombie or a vampire. He had liked stories about the zombie apocalypse back when he was still young, in a time that was still thousands of years in the future. He had seen a lot of strange things in his time at the time agency, his travels with the doctor, even some creatures that refused to die. The thing was just, they usually weren't human and even if they were, they had performed some strange experiments upon themselves. And finally, they still died. All of them.

But Jack, well he tried to test his limits. Jumped off cliffs, shot himself, got into the most reckless fights. He just noticed that he could not stay dead.

 

1880s

 

The first time Jack Harkness realised that he could not live was when he fell in love with a woman, Anne, in 1882. She was an Irish immigrant and used to bad and strange things. She had, after all, survived many a famine and the long, dirty and dangerous journey to the new world somewhere in the steerage of one of the big coal vessels.

She was poor and so was he, always trying to avoid attention, always trying to fit in to this world that wasn't exactly his, always trying to kill himself.

He was depressed and lonely and worked in the port of Boston. It was dire work and badly paid, but neither had Jack the good connections necessary in those times to get a better job nor was he willing or capable of completely adapting to those times. He knew after all, that they would pass and he would see it. None of the others around him would but him. He knew that if he couldn't die, he'd survive, watching governments and cities and finally probably worlds turning into dust around him. Yes, Jack Harkness was aware that it was probably the best thing to stay away from people who he would outlive after some time. He wondered whether it was like that for the doctor and he pitied him a bit because even a man of lesser experience than him would have been able to understand the way the doctor looked at Rose.

Then Jack remembered that the doctor left him on that bloody satellite all those years in the future and all the pity vanished. He didn't know whether his longevity was the doctors fault or a medical condition that just appeared the first time after the Dalek shot him because that was the first time he had died but he didn't really care. The doctor had known he was alive, for whatever reason, and had left him anyway.

Yes, Jack was depressed back then. That was, until he met Anne. She wasn't exactly beautiful since the hard work and the malnourishment had taken their toll, but she was funny and compassionate and she didn't seem to care about the morales as much as most of the people here while still having a fierce dignity and an unbreakable pride. Her life had been hard, being the fourth of eight children, widow and mother to two kids that had died back in Ireland. Jack admired how she had never lost her will to live even after all that she had been through. It made him accept himself a bit.

Anne and Jack had a wonderful relationship. Nothing big and romantic, no poetry recited while strolling on beaches in the sunset (Anne could neither read nor would she have cared for something as useless and vague as poems), no big gestures, just the two of them, and Jack giving her his food because he could survive without it, even though that was not really comfortable, just so she would have it better and Anne looking out for him when he was depressed and never being anything but supportive and nice.

It was home in a way that Jack had never expected to experience, it was safe and secure and familiar and Anne was everything he could wish for in all the galaxies and times he had seen.

They were happy together, their wedding was very small, just their few friends and they went to their little flat afterwards, not feeling as different and great as he thought he would, they were just happy instead.

And this evening, as they were laying together in bed like the married couple they were, Jack thought that if this was eternity, it wasn't that bad. He could spend years like that.

 

1890s

 

Except of course, that he couldn't. They tried for children, tried very hard because Jack knew how much Anne longed for them but it never happened. Anne shrugged it of, but Jack secretly blamed himself and whatever it was that made him freakish for it. But even though, their marriage was a good one, they were happy and could find comfort in each other after long days of work and the poverty. That was when Jack realised he couldn't age. Anne had been in her thirties already when they had met and her life hadn't exactly been the easiest so she aged very fast while Jack didn't chage a bit. It didn't matter for him, he loved her anyway but he could see that it hurt her in a strange way he couldn't fully comprehend.

They talked about it only once and she told him that she felt like she was holding him back. In the end, she told him that she wished they would have grown old together, just like they promised at their wedding.

She didn't even reach fifty. When she died, of some disease not even he with his medical skills from the future could heal, he didn't cry. He just sat in the little, dirty flat that was all his now and wondered about life. If Anne had been born in his times, she wouldn't have suffered like that, there would have been medicine. If Anne had been born in his times, they probably wouldn't have met, Jack had been so eager on getting out and seeing the world to care that much about his home. He wonders whether she would have been happy. He just doesn't know. He looks at his hands sometimes, his hands that are still young, even though he' s spent decades in this time by now. He wonders whether the doctor will ever turn up. If he would talk to him, provide explanations. Jack doubts it. He wishes. Wishes Anne was still there. Wishes it weren't still millenia to go until the 51st century. He feels very tired. He doesn't feel alive.

 

1900s

 

He moves back to Britain some time after the turn of the century. He doesn't know the exact date, isn't even that sure about the year. He's worked for a bit. He spent ages sitting in a field in Kent, looking up into the sky, watching the stars and the clouds and the sun. He isn't sure whether he's looking for a blue telephone box. It doesn't turn up anyway.

He loses track of time. It just flies by as he watches the sky. Sometimes, the rain soaks his clothes. Sometimes, the sun dries them. Sometimes he just dies. He doesn't feel hunger or thirst anymore. He doesn't feel anything at all.

One day it starts to snow. Jack doesn't notice the cold, even though he dies from hypothermia a few times. It doesn't matter, he just wakes up again.

1910s

He is discovered some time later. A little boy visits him and they talk for a while. Jack finds out that it is January in 1912. He is in Britain for more than a decade.

He picks himself up and decides that now is the time to do something, even though he isn't sure what. He wanders through England. In march he reaches the sea in Brighton. Somebody tells him about the Titanic that is about to leave for her maiden voyage next month. They are excited. They don't know. Yet. Jack wonders what they will think when they get the news about the sinking. Maybe they'll lose someone. Jack contemplates buying a ticket. Maybe he could save someone aboard. (The doctor would like that, wouldn't he?). He could drown a few times, and maybe swim. If he's lucky he'll reach a deserted island, somewhere the war that is due in two years will not reach. Somewhere silent, where there are no people.

But then he remembers that there will be immigrants on that ship, women just like Anne who he will not be able to save. He doesn't have the money anyway.

He wonders what would happen if he just stopped people from going aboard. He'd save their lives. But it would probably destroy a timeline or something. Jack gets a job in a bakery.

The Titanic sails and sinks.

Jack wanders again.

There is a little villages where he hears rumours about aliens. Something to do with a school and an army of scarecrows. Jack spents a little time there, but there is no sign of the doctor.

1914 starts the war. Jack spends a while contemplating whether he should enlist. It isn't his conflict. What happens to the people he kills? They die and he won't. He hates it.

He enlists in 1916 because he cannot bear it any longer and for the first time in decades he feels alive again. He spends months in the trenches and realises how much he had missed the cameradie between soldiers. He realises, for all that is different now, he is still human and missed company. It feels good to talk a bit about girls (no boys in this era) and books and the future. He pretends he has one. It feels reassuring to know that most of those boys just want to marry and have children. That is, until he remembers that their sons will fight in the next world war. Life feels incredible futile then. What are they suffering for if it isn't going to last?

He dies a few times, always taking a bullet for comrades, but nobody notices. He begins an affair with Tris, a man from his unit. It is very secret and really just handjobs somewhere in the trenches. They'd both be shot if it ever came out, not that Jack would care. Still, it's comfort. One night he saves Tris from an exploding grenade. He can feel the adrenaline rushing through his veins and a great deal relieved. It is the first time in forever that he really cared about someone. He looks up into the sky and there is no blue box. In the unbelievable dirt that is Western France, Jack thinks he might be a bit in love. Tris dies in July 1917. Jack never tells anyone about what they had. He is just another fallen soldier in the end. Jack knows too many.

He tries not make friends, tries not to let anyone come close again. He fails. They are just so young, so much like children that he can't help but feel for them. Their innocence, their youth. When the war ends the next year, he promises to stay in touch. He doesn't.

 

1920s

 

He goes to Germany in the 1920s. He has some affairs with women. He picks up a guy in his late twenties one night (Berlin is very open in that aspect) and they go to Jack's room. It is when he undresses that he notices the scars on the man's hips. Jack knows that kind of wound. It comes from a grenade.

The guy smiles sadly when Jack asks. Yes, he was in the war. When Jack asks how he could do this with him, who was his enemy, the man doesn't understand. The war is over, he says.

And Jack thinks that maybe, their lives are too short to think long about this war. Maybe this guy is too forgiving.

But Jack knows that he might have been the one who threw that grenade. Maybe that boy had been the one who killed Tris. He thinks about what that man is going to do in the years to come. Maybe he will leave the country. Maybe he will end up in a concentration camp. Or maybe he will just hide his preferences like he did in the last war and become a good Nazi. Maybe he is going to fight in the next war too.

Jack, for the first time in a very long while, feels sick. What gets him is how inevitable it is. All of it. He thinks about the doctor again. It must be hell for him. He wonders whether that was what the doctor felt when he lost all of the other time lords. What does immortality mean if the world itself is mortal? What does power mean if it can't be used?

When he hears Hitler for the first time, in 1923, he decides to go back to Britain.

Then he realises that both the Doctor and Jack himself are going to be in London during the blitz. Maybe he could hide in the TARDIS or something. Maybe he will finally have a way to see the whole of time and space again. But of course he knows it's futile. (Everything is, these days).

 

1930s

 

He spends some time in France instead, visiting the graves of the men he fought with. They are covered in flowers and sometimes, he meets veterans. Now, 12 years after the war, some don't believe him when he tells them he was there. He goes to the villages he saw destroyed and there they are, rebuild and alive. Not as they must have been before the war, but still. Alive.

He meets a woman called Amalie, whom he loves for a year. They go to Paris, beautiful Paris, and Jack almost knows his way around, navigating with memories of a distant future. It is strange how much the city does not change.

He dies a few times instead. Once he is the lover of an influential and rich shopkeeper. When the man thinks him unfaithful, he shoots him in the back of his head, then gives him a beautiful funeral. Everybody assumes him to be an illegitimate son or relative. Jack does not know whether to feel touched or offended as he breaks out of his coffin at night. This, too, is Paris.

He visits the Olympics and the Nazi dictatorship, he takes part in the Spanish civil war. He meets people and they are so incredibly complex. There is a man who supports General Franco and who dies to protect his wife. There is a woman who fights against Hitler but for Stalin.

Jack loses track of the right side of history.

It starts to look like circle instead of a line, anyway.

 

1940s

 

When the war starts, he enlists in the British army and dies a few times. In 1942, he witnesses a few soldiers executing POW.

He turns around and walks away.

He walks away from the camp, from the war, from the soldiers.

He walks through France and Germany and Russia, being shot and bombed to death, starving and freezing many times.

He thinks about Jesus Christ, who is still greatly admired everywhere. If his martyrdom brought forgiveness, then what does mine do, Jack asks himself.

He finds nothing.

For some time, Jack thinks about responsibility. Right now, somewhere in the world, there is Auschwitz. Somewhere else.

There is nothing he can do. He knows about fix points and he knows about grief. He thinks about Gallifrey a lot, burning in the sky, and he thinks about home.

If he had any tears left, he would cry.

In 1944, Jack saves a child from a burning building. The mother thanks him. The child will one day have children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. One of these great grandchildren will be a writer of the 22nd century whose popularity will last until the school days of young Jack Harkness. Jack will have to read the classics and will find them dry.

There is nothing to be changed about that.

 

When the war ends, Europe rejoices. Jack does not. He knows about wars to come.

The world heals anyway.

Children stop flinching at loud noises and they don't imitate the sound of bombs in their games anymore.

Husbands return and families regrow. People fall in love.

Soon, there are children that do not remember the war at all.

Houses are rebuilt, houses Jack knows will last for centuries. The cemeteries get fuller still.

 

1950s

 

The world grows and so does the conflict between America and Russia. Jack is tired of conflict.

He lives in Britain now, and starts working for Torchwood. He meets a boy named John Lennon and he does not tell him.

The boy will find out.

Jack still finds himself humming "Yesterday" afterwards.

Women fight for their rights, so do the immigrants. Jack marches along, happy in the crowd.

He thinks about Anne, sometimes. He meets people. They have names but it gets harder to remember them. Or rather, it gets harder to care.

Jack is aware that the lovers he had a century ago are dead now. He hopes that they found what they were looking for in the end. Jack knows he has not.

He listens to fast music and smiles along.

We're moving onwards, are we not? A woman asks him. She is smiling. There are numbers on her arm.

 

1960s

 

Jack doesn't.

He spends some time reading and some time hunting aliens.

The doctor is nowhere to be found and sometimes Jack wonders whether he has been real at all. In fact, he wouldn't believe in the doctor if it wasn't for the fact that he can't die. He tries it a few times, just because.

The result never changes.

Jack listens to music and sleeps with people. He discusses Vietnam. People fly into space and Jack is amazed. He is that a lot.

Humans have such a short life span, after all. The people working on the space projects had all witnessed the war. They had all read about the concentration camps and the atomic bombs. And yet, they fly.

This is what the doctor lives for, he thinks. He understands the old man better now. He understands his struggle for humanity to need him.

 

Because the truth is this: the world does not need Jack and the world does not need the doctor.

Once upon a time, Jack thought it did. But as he stands on the shoreline of Scotland one dark day in late 1969, he realises that it's them who need the world. Humanity will sort itself out for a long time and on the day it won't, neither Jack nor the Doctor will be able to do anything against it.

 

Jack likes to look at cities. He remembers the villages of the 19th century and it is breathtaking to look at what has been accomplished since then. There are people everywhere, people who know that they are going to die, people who live and love and smile anyway and Jack marvels at their courage.

They are not alone in the darkness after all. There is so much light.

 

1970s

 

Time flies. Jack watches technology advance. Ridiculous television shows and atrocious hairdos. Hostages at the olympics and dictatorships.

Airplanes make it much easier to travel the world. Jack makes good use of this. People are everywhere. He learns to speak Quechua and knitting. He learns to look after children and how to dance to disco music. He learns that no matter how dark the night might seem, somewhere on earth it is day.

It sounds cheesy when he thinks it like that and yet. There is hope to be found.

 

Jack meets a man named Paolo. They make love and Jack feels alive again. They live together for a while. One day, Paolo mentions his grandfather, who fought in the Great War.

There must be a punchline in there somewhere, Jack thinks. Somewhere in the universe, some higher being must be sitting and laughing at me.

Those higher beings do not make an appearance in this story.

Paolo dies of drug overdose one lovely day in spring. Jack thinks about all the graves he has and the ones he mourned at.

Maybe it is a sign of age that you are mourning more people than you are loving.

The problem is just that Jack starts to love all people. Not in a religious, forgiving kind of way, it's more admiration, really.

It's more like he wants to tell them how proud he is that even though they know about the objective futility of their own existence, they refuse to believe in it.

The universe might be a vast, dark and relatively empty place, but still there are people who worry about giving birthday presents.

You see, even the smallest candle helps against the eternal darkness.

People, Jack Harkness has learned, are not small candles.

People are fireworks.

 

1980s

The eighties are just as bright as Jack always imagined them. In a way, they are even brighter.

Jack gets a haircut he knows he is going to regret and he loves it. He talks about politics with people the same way they talk about the weather and Jack is fine with that. There is no use to talk to people about long term consequences since the mere concept of it is too abstract for them. In a hundred years, they will be dust.

Jack will still be there, wandering among the ruins that won't be ruins, that will still be cities, pulsating with life, bursting at the seams with people just as happy, just as bright as they always were.

Don't be scared, he wants to tell them sometimes, when he sees them sceptical at new inventions, changing times.

But they do not need that advice, do they? They are wary in the beginnning, they always are, but they will come around, or their children will. They keep moving forward and in the end, the only one scared and still somehow standing in the same place is Jack.

He does not have his scars from the wars anymore but that doesn't mean that they are not there, that they are not burned into his soul and memories. In the end it is him who sometimes can't sleep at night because he remembers.

 

The Cold War is still going and then it is over, just as Jack always knew it would be. Greater regimes than the Soviet Union have fallen and greater will fall in the future.

The Berlin Wall is nothing but a symbol in the end, for all the walls that will crumble with time.

Jack remembers Berlin in the twenties and he can't, for the life of him, remember that young man's name.

He might be still alive, heavy with the memories of what he has done and what was done to him.

Jack does not know.

 

1990s

 

Jack falls in love with trivia. He loves the movie Jurassic Park and the fact that people built dinosaurs out of plastic and paper mache to make them look like beasts while somewhere else, other people, flesh and water, too, are thrown into mass graves.

Jack does not mourn Rwanda any more than he mourns Kosovo.

He watches disney movies about princesses and he visits a young girl named Rose Tyler. She does not know about the universe yet.

Oh, the things she'll find out.

 

Instead, Jack watches the Internet grow and people being outraged about it. Mobile phones start to connect the world even more. Jack falls in love again, with a woman who is in her sixties, looking so much older than him and yet being so much younger.

She sometimes talks like he actually is a child, because of course she does not know. She thinks he is particularly thoughtful or mature. She also suspects he is a writer.

Jack tries writing sometimes but it just does not work. Language changes fast and there are words that people on Earth do not yet know and that they do not know anymore and to Jack, they make a potpourri of thoughts, a million different people he learned them from.

He cannot chain them to paper.

 

He tries drawing and for a time, that works, but he keeps getting distracted. Whenever he looks at people now, he imagines what they looked like as babies and what they will look like when they are old. He can almost see the white skulls whenever he looks at human faces too long.

He gets lost in cities because he navigates by maps that are a few decades old and it is good that he is not too dependent on money because it is such a hassle to work out what counts as cheap or expensive today.

Technology grows and grows and Jack starts taking photos. They appear very old-fashioned and modern to him at the same time, but he stops after he remembers that they, too fade with time and that all he would be left with would be a stack of images that resemble closely but not completely a part of his life that he could not afford to get hung up on anyway.

It is, but Jack does not know that yet, almost time for the Doctor to show up.

 

2000s

 

When he meets the doctor again, he is not angry.

He has seen the name "Rose Tyler" on a list.

He has fought.

He has lost.

He understands.

When they are alone, Jack says: "I know why you love them now."

The doctor looks at him, incredibly old, incredibly lonely, and smiles.

 

* * *

500.000.000.000 years after the planet Earth burns to a crisp

 

They don't have graves anymore. Their names are lost somewhere on the tangled paths of Captain Jack. Sometimes, he sees a man whose eyes resembles Tris', a woman whose laughter sounds like Anne's. These are the echoes that haunt time itself. Not wars or people. Just the fleeting glimpse of a single smile.

The memories push to the surface sometimes, but he can rarely place them. For all he has known, it is better to let them rest. They deserve their peace after all.

Their stories are over, their voices are silent. Nobody remembers them now. They burnt bright once, as bright as the universe. Galaxies could not match their shine. And even now, that the darkness has covered everything, that they have become part of the darkness themselves, there is still the fact that once upon a time, they have existed.

And does that not make all the difference?


End file.
